What Do We Think of Religion in Civ VI?

[Navelgazer]

What works for you about the Religion Game in Civ VI (or in previous iterations of Civ)? What doesn’t? Looking into the (possibly distant) future for Civ7, what would an ideal Religion game look like to you?

As somebody who prefers faith-based games of Civ, I’ve been thinking over this quite a bit, while I prefer the Civ6 Religion mechanics to those in previous titles, there’s room for improvement in Strategic Depth, Historical Feel, and for lack of a better word, Unpredictability.

By Historical Feel, I mean that dictating tenets of faith top-down, and spreading those tenets through missionaries and apostles, never feels quite flavorful to me. Spain and Byzantium spreading their chosen religions via the Sword is a lot closer (meanwhile Poland’s culture-bomb conversion has never felt like anything but an odd game mechanic to me, but opinions may vary.)

Throughout history, of course, religion, like language, has rarely been constructed by those in power and then handed down, but more usually an adaptation of beliefs and myths and cultural values that wise and clever leaders can use as a tool, while foolish leaders can be overrun by it. Reformation comes from Schisms, not from a Ruler saying “we all believe this now on top of the previous stuff.” Etc. This is what I’d like to see reflected in the religion system in a new iteration.

Picture creating a pantheon much like you do in Civ6 – likely but not necessarily based on the land, or what you’re already doing in the early game. Then, when you earn a Great Prophet and found a proper Religion, the set of tenet choices available to you is based on what you’ve been doing so far – instead of determining a belief system for your people based on long-term goals, you’re in effect codifying their culture and activities into the Divine.

Finally, reformation wouldn’t come from building enough temples and/or researching the proper civic, but from spreading your religion widely enough that you start to receive rebellions or schisms in the cities following the religion you’ve founded. I picture this being random (not unlike natural disasters in Civ 6, and possibly with a sliding setting of likelihood as well) with greater likelihood from geographic distance from the holy city, total population in the city, and presence of other religions in the city.

So what would happen in a Schism? I picture getting an alert (obviously) where the city basically proposes an addition or change of a tenet of your religion. You can decide to accept this change (it may very well work for you, and other ways of choosing religious tenets will be slim), causing some unhappiness throughout the rest of your religious empire for some amount of turns (similar to anarchy in Civ4) or you can send in an Inquisitor to quell the heretics (Yay for more use for Inquisitors!) or you can ignore it, but that’ll decrease loyalty and make the city more susceptible to other religions until the matter is addressed.

That’s if it’s in your own political empire of course. Schisms in cities following your religion outside of your empire would be handled a little differently – you can still send in your inquisitors to quell the heresy, but other civs will be able to close their borders to your religious units, and can take the opportunity to found a New Religion out of the tenets of the Schism if they haven’t already founded one. Doing so would create a casus belli, as would sending in religious units against the other civ’s wishes.

The goal of this would be to not only create a more organic feeling religion game, but to make the choices involved be more in response to immediate situations, and interact more fluidly with other mechanics in the game.

Having pitched my own vision, I return to the original question – what currently works for you, what doesn’t, and what would you like to see in the future?

 

[Zaarin]

I feel like Firaxis has been so averse to causing offense in their depiction of religion that they've gone out of their way to make it look absolutely nothing like religion. I think religion needs to be redone from the ground up. As you said, religion is rarely something invented by the state and imposed downward; it's usually something derived from the people (that the state may then very well find ways to use to its advantage--like the pharaoh declaring himself a divinity or a king using it as an excuse to claim a neighbor's land). I'd love to see religion reworked in Civ7 to look like actual religion and not...whatever Civ5 and Civ6 think they're doing. And yes please to schisms, reformations, and heresies.

 

[Foulweather]

Currently Religion is handled like Domination games, which are my least favorite. I don’t enjoy sending waves of apostles across the ocean to pop religious charges in distant cities, it’s just tedious. I’m a builder, so I’d support any interesting play style that lets you win by building religious wonders, enacting popular beliefs and tenets with wide appeal, and utilizing more robust passive religious pressures to convert cities.

 

[fy00sh]

My biggest complaint with the Civ 6 religious system is that religion is always specifically proselytic religion. I wish you could decide whether or not your religion is proselytic, and have different bonuses and/or downsides to each choice. Some games i want to convert as much of the world as I can whereas sometimes I only want to make sure my own cities follow and get the bonuses of my religion, and I feel like it could be really cool if these different ways of approaching religion were able to feel more unique.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Thinks about religion that I like in Civ 6:

1. Religious Victory: I know a lot of people dislike the idea of a religious victory but I don't mind it personally. Religion has played a big part of history that it makes sense that it would be a victory type. The idea behind converting other people/ the majority of world works too as a win condition. This in my mind is another "aggressive" type of win condition which I think is needed compared to 3 "passive" win conditions. Theological Combat also comes to my mind as being a great addition despite the lightning being struck down on opposing units, which I don't mind either.

2. Variety of buildings and units: I like that they've implemented a wider range of units (apostles, guru, warrior monks) and worship buildings (Meeting House, Wat, Stupa etc.) with their own unique abilities, promotions etc. I'd like to see more of these in the future.

Things I wish were better:

1. Great Prophets: I don't think it would be controversial, at least in my opinion, to add abilities to Great Prophets. Currently all they are useful is founding a religion. It would be cool if after founding a religion they could still have another charge such as John the Baptist creating a relic or Francis of Assisi granting faith to unimproved woods tiles adjacent to a Holy Site. They've already avoided putting certain ones in the game that would be considered very controversial so I think the ones they have in the game could benefit from these. Even after all the religions have been founded maybe you can still recruit them to do their other ability.
Plus now that Great Merchants have a similar use to founding a corporation, in addition to their original abilities, why not do the opposite with Great Prophets?

2. Schisms/Reformations: I agree that Schisms/Reformations should be a thing. I originally though Secret Societies might have dealt with that but oh well.
I was thinking more along the lines of if you had never founded a religion and got converted then you might have the chance of reforming an existing religion in your city once you reach the Reformed Church civic. You could still have attributes of the dominant religion in the city but maybe have a different follower belief. It would be considered a new religion though and would possibly allow you to go for a religious victory.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't think you want a system like religion to be too far outside of your own hands in a 4X game, so in that respect, I'm fine with letting the user dictate when missionaries are built and spread, and how deeply to pursue religion.

Likes:
-Faith has a use outside of religious games. Part of me also enjoys that religious bonuses are not over the top. I can safely skip the "religious" side of the game, and not overly suffer, but you can also still simply build holy sites and use that faith on great people, units, rock bands, naturalists, etc... to aid in your other VCs.
-Adding in the "religious combat" and varying unit types I do enjoy to a certain extent as a new and unique way to spread. It's not simply "spam missionaries towards your neighbours", but you can now actually take an active and arguably strategic view on spreading religion. Sure, it's cheesy to have bolts of lightning, and I do think religious combat suffers from a very simplified system, I'd like to see them expand out the Guru system to create a more dynamic setup. But It adds a new element lacking in the previous games.

Dislikes:
-Great Prophets being a one and done to found a religion. While I understand you probably don't want to have like a "John the Baptist can immediately convert a city to your religion" or some system that might create a little too, uh, personal bonus to certain prophets or religions, I don't understand why they didn't keep you discovering great prophets through the eras, and having them be responsible for reforming the religion, rather than delegating that to apostles. You could make them kind of like either a super-apostle, or maybe make them act like a great general whose retirement ability is to reform a religion.
-Another dislike about the religion in all civ games is that if you do not found a religion, you're basically locked out of a lot of it. Sure, you can still spread someone else's religion to give you some slight bonuses, like if I want to make sure I can build Wats in my cities. But there's no other forms of control of religion if you are not the founder. You're at the mercy of the founder for what it reforms into.

Other:
-From a historical and gameplay perspective, I would love it if we had a system where you could sort of base your empire's religion on someone else's basic religion, but then have a way to personalize it. So, for example, if Spain founds Christianity, then if I get a prophet later, I would like the option to A. found my own religion or B. Reform their religion to my own "derivative", ie. Protestantism. Then as you both add tenets to your religion over time, perhaps sometimes you could be happy to adopt the same tenets that they do, but perhaps allow you to reject a tenet of their religion, which could potentially cause a full schism and separation. You'd obviously have to figure out how close the religions continue, but basically if you create a multi-layer system where in some respects, you're both Christians so you have some pieces in common, but perhaps as the religions diverge enough over time, they would be their own unique one, and may even start holy wars vs each other, for example.
-For gameplay, I feel like religion should also have a slightly larger effect in how you play the game. Like, I love the pantheons, getting your choice can certainly impact how you expand and play the game, but I think I would like that even more. Like, I think it would be really cool if holy sites by default started with no adjacency bonuses possible, but as you grow your faith, you can potentially personalize it more. If they moved all the holy site adjacencies into potential pantheon cards, and over time, you ended up choosing 4 or 5 different ones, I feel like that would create a more unique environment. So perhaps I feel like my religion will be based on Sacred Path, Fire Goddess, and Fertility Rites, then my holy sites would all be situated in jungles, but I'd gain no bonus from them being next to a mountain. I guess partly that's because when I'm picking pantheons, I kind of like to get the holy site adjacency ones, but then it's also cool to give specific bonuses to specific resources, but also some of the other ones are so unique that they're fun to try out. So I just want to be able to pick multiple versions of them each game. Of course, for balance you'd have to figure out if people would be allowed to pick duplicates, or keep them unique.
-They also obviously need to fix the problem at higher levels where chasing a religion too early is simply a suicidal play. While districts certainly cause some fun challenges for city specialization, and faith has multiple uses later, the biggest flaw is that it's virtually useless the first 50-ish turns of the game, so if my neighbour is coming at me with a bunch of archers and swords, some magic being throwing lightning from the sky won't help me.

 

[Scrabbler]

The main problem with how religion is handled in both Civ 5 and Civ 6 is that each religion is owned by its founder and, except in rare cases, regarded as an "enemy" invasive religion by all other civs. It was not like this in Civ 4. Once a religion had been founded, apart from the gold benefit for the holy city, it was essentially an independent entity that all players could choose to either ignore, spread or adopt as a state religion for diplomatic reasons or for better yields when adopting certain civics. Players could also choose to found multiple religions within their empire. This, I think, led to much more interesting and historically satisfying gameplay. The way it was handled in Civ 4 wasn't perfect and I would like to see some parts of the Civ 6 system return, but I really hope that Civ 7 goes for a religion system that is more like Civ 4 than Civ 6.

 

[djvandyke]

I’d like to see much more passive religious spread if you invest in the right infrastructure and great works and much less reliance on units.

As per the previous post, religious victory feels far too similar to domination. it should be something you build towards, not spam units.

 

[Zaarin]

As per the previous post, religious victory feels far too similar to domination. it should be something you build towards, not spam units.

I'd like to see Religious Victory gone entirely, but if it stays I'd rather see it as "the other Cultural Victory" than "the other Domination Victory."

 

[Navelgazer]

I'd like to see Religious Victory gone entirely, but if it stays I'd rather see it as "the other Cultural Victory" than "the other Domination Victory."

I don't have much of an opinion about Religious Victory being a thing, but I'd like for Religion as a mechanic to be more organic and immersive, and less of a "Race for the best beliefs" thing that it currently is. It should be something that can seep its way into all aspects of the game and cut both ways.

 

[Amrunril]

I would definitely want the customization aspect of religion to return in any future iterations. Building a religion is one of the most interesting decision points in any game where it happens. It may not be realistic, in most cases, for religious tenets to be dictated "top-down", but the same could be said (again, in most cases) of scientific progress, or city placement, or really any element of the game. The game of Civilization is built around controlling a civilization in a way that no ruler ever did, and building a custom religion to fit your strategy is one of the most fun ways of doing that.

That said, I think the details of the religion system could be improved a lot. Better balanced beliefs would enhance the focus on building a religion that synergizes with itself and the rest of your playstyle, rather than simply racing for the best options. The game would also benefit from having more follower beliefs that don't depend on holy sites or faith output, so as to give non-founding players more incentive to care what religions are spreading in their territory.

The most glaring issues, though, are with the system of religious spread and units. The religious combat system, in addition to adding a lot of micromanagement, is arguably completely defective when not propped up by AI stupidity. Since fighting and losing religious combat not only throws away units but also gives the opponent free religious spread, an outmatched player is actively hurting their position if they try to offer resistance in this arena. Stopping religious spread with military units, in contrast, is trivial to a degree that closes off a lot of strategic possibilities (including, though certainly not limited to, religious victory against competent opposition).

 

[Futumch]

Great Prophets should be able to kill Vampires outright.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I almost never go for religious or domination victories because it's too tedious to keep moving giant armies of units or apostles around all the time. However, religious victory has even worse problems in that, against a human, it's basically impossible. It's so easy to murder religious units that any religious victory attempt basically needs to be escorted by so much army that you may as well do domination. And if you don't go to war... inquisitors are so cheap compared to the cost of converting unwilling religious enemies that that also makes it basically impossible.

However, I do really enjoy using religion for its passive bonuses (like yields, buildings, etc). I almost always start my games with a holy site and rarely continue a game if I fail to get a religion, even when I'm going for scientific or diplomatic victory. I often only make the one holy site and only convert my own cities, but I feel like I'm missing a bit part of the game if I don't get one. My cultural victories are greatly aided by... not really religion directly, but by having a high faith generation, which often is helped by a religion.

I am not against the concept of a religious victory, but given how it's basically "domination lite", I wouldn't be sad to see it gone either. I do wish there was more religious crusading/factionizing aspects to it. Sharing a religion should cause a way larger diplomatic/friendship bonus until, lets say the renaissance or industrial era. Conquering enemy holy cities and converting them should get a huge diplo boost with other civs that share your religion, or who have been wronged by the target religion. I'd also like to see schisms, but that'd probably be hard to design. The eastern and western christian churches were clearly part of the same religion throughout history, and "teamed up" fairly often, but were clearly not always on good term.

 

[untitledjuan]

The main problem with how religion is handled in both Civ 5 and Civ 6 is that each religion is owned by its founder and, except in rare cases, regarded as an "enemy" invasive religion by all other civs. It was not like this in Civ 4. Once a religion had been founded, apart from the gold benefit for the holy city, it was essentially an independent entity that all players could choose to either ignore, spread or adopt as a state religion for diplomatic reasons or for better yields when adopting certain civics. Players could also choose to found multiple religions within their empire. This, I think, led to much more interesting and historically satisfying gameplay. The way it was handled in Civ 4 wasn't perfect and I would like to see some parts of the Civ 6 system return, but I really hope that Civ 7 goes for a religion system that is more like Civ 4 than Civ 6.

I completely agree on this, the religion system that I've liked the most until now is the one in Civ4. It is more representative of how a religion wasn't necessarily owned by a single Civ or a single State, but could in fact be shared and used to form bonds (and conflicts) between nations.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, there are reasons why the system currently works the way it does.

Civilization is not a simulation game. It is a strategy game. Opposition is supposed to come from the other players, not from RNG events. More randomness in religion would be welcomed by a certain subset of players, but others would just restart in frustration if the RNG doesn't roll in their favor. This is exactly the reason why the devs were so hesitant to add natural disasters to the game for such a long time, and also the reason why natural disasters took on a mostly toothless form when they did finally arrive.

I could see, at most, a toggle that would give players the option to have beliefs be randomly assigned when founding a religion or evangelizing with an apostle, instead of being chosen from a list. But having that option turned off would still likely be the default. Pantheon beliefs are too terrain-dependent to be truly randomized. They would need to develop some kind of weighting system, like how start biases work.

I've always thought it's a mistake to interpret Civ as a game where you play as just the ruler of a nation. My interpretation has always been that you play as the nation itself, rather than its ruler. This is why the systems you interact with include both public sector elements like Government Plazas and and private sector elements like Commercial Hubs. So when I choose religious beliefs from a list, I don't really see it as some ruler imposing unwanted tenants on the people. I see it as a the spirit of your nation manifesting itself through your chosen beliefs.

True reformations and schisms don't happen for the same reasons true rebellions and wars for independence don't happen. Again, I think the best outcome you could hope for here is an optional toggle. If turned on, then cities that have been converted to a religion for a long time may suddenly become the holy city of brand a new religion, with entirely different beliefs. Then it's up to you whether you want to exterminate this new faith from your nation or encourage it to spread if you like the new beliefs more than the old ones. Similarly, there could be a mode where cities that suffer loyalty deficiencies become true AI controlled rival nations rather than Free Cities. But such ideas would need to be 100% optional, not just the way the game always works.

 

[Oldlamehand]

Religion in Civilization VI is a stupid concept. I like that different religions may have different bonuses, but that's all.
The religions in Civilization 4 were much better. It was one of the main mechanisms that divided civilizations into friends and enemies. In Civilization 4, the player knew that converting to a particular religion would improve relations with a few civilizations, but about half the world would hate him. In Civilization VI, it does not work this way, and instead there is a boring theological combat that means more micromanegement.
Due to the 1UPT concept one spends much more time moving units than in civilization 4, and religion makes it even worse.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Blergh. That's what I think of religion in Civ 6. It's better than what it used to be, meaning it's now a strategically viable tool, as opposed to a distraction but a rethink is needed.

Theological Combat and Religious Victory are poorly thought out concepts, the product of desperately wishing to force change whilst having no real ideas on how to accomplish this.

In a nutshell, like many of Civ 6's core concepts, there's so much potential, but it's squandered through a lack of creative direction, and a few hotfixes cannot fix those entirely.

 

[almughavar]

Tbh I often neglect religions in matches which I have played. I also have a tendency of picking civs which have no religion advantage, because I don't feel like managing the pants-on-head religion aspect.

 

[goatdeer]

Religion as a supportive system for other victory types is ok. I mostly play without it, but sometimes I go for it, just to alter my playstyle a bit.

Religious Victory is a lost opportunity. There are mainly two problems that makes pursuing this victory a drag:
1) There is really only one strategy, just get as much faith as you can (by building holy sites everywhere) and spam out apostles as much as you can. You can speed up this process with some wonders and moksha but that's about it. There really is no other way. Missionaries are a waste of time. Gurus are a waste of time. And religious spread by proximity is way too slow.
2) The other systems are not involved. You need a bit of science to get to some wonders, but you basically could win without them. You need some culture to get to theocracy, and then you stick with theocracy, no need to invest in culture any longer. No need for gold. Of course you could argue you need it for defense, but let's be real, that's not something to wrap your head around. That's it.

And then of course, the AI sucks at religious battle, while religious battle is how you win.

There is, of course, a potential for this system. I don't understand how the developers can come up with something complex and (at least to me) immersive as the cultural victory type, but they come up with something so basic as the religious victory. It's not that hard, it just takes a bit of creativity. Just come up with a couple of extra units and extra districts/buildings. Make sure it doesn't only revolve around faith, but let's get science, culture and gold into the game. Make sure there are more roads that lead to Rome and most of all, make it so that the AI has the possibility of winning. Imo this doesn't need a new engine, it could easily be built upon what already exists. Then again, I'm not a developer.

 

[Kotofei]

I'd like to see Religious Victory gone entirely, but if it stays I'd rather see it as "the other Cultural Victory" than "the other Domination Victory."

Disable it, bro. I do.

But I agree, it should be something that you cultivate, not spam.